Blindly Walking
by Saquoia
Summary: Something is happening in Oregon. A suicide before them convinces Dean that it's real. From suicide, strange pictures and manipulated perceptions, the Winchesters find themselves doing what they do best. [Completely Canon. Like an episode.]
1. The Beginning

**Title:** Blindly Walking

**Summary:** Sam is convinced something strange happening in Oregon Dean not so much. A suicide before their eyes convinces Dean that something is going on. From suicide, strange pictures and manipulated perceptions, the Winchesters find themselves doing what they do best.

**Promise:** I promise I will do my best to keep characters in character, preserve canon and not write Wincest. I promise to make the story believable and spell correctly. If I do not, so help me Fan Fiction Gods.

₪

_Saturday, 10:00 AM._

An old-style Chevy Impala rolled through a town, trying to be as nondescript as possible as it rolled down the old and crumbling road. The car had a thin film of dust covering the bottom third of the car and the rear left wheel looked like it was starting to lose pressure. The car made a slight humming noise that one couldn't quite classify as normal.

The driver pulled it over and turned to his passenger. "We're here, so now I get to do what I want first. Before we get into any business."

His passenger stared at him. "And what do you want?"

"Fruit." The driver said and exited the car, heading for a fruit stand.

The town was average sized and its people were normal, simply going about their day. Small shops draped with artsy curtains and cute canvas covers stood open on every street corner and people were moving about, gearing up for what promised to be a hot Saturday morning in Oregon. Small farmers were bringing out more ice to keep their produce cold in their stands and the local pools were opening early.

Down the road was one of the aforementioned farmers' stands. Spread across it were a plethora of berries ranging from blueberries to strawberries to blackberries. They were neatly arranged with prices behind them and the berries were full, ripe and juicy. Just looking at them made peoples' mouths water. Yet, leaning over the fresh fruit stand, one individual eyed something he found much more enticing than the produce displayed on the fruit carts below—the girl that was selling it.

For all his staring, he didn't seem to garner much attention in return. She looked busy and apparently had not noticed him quite yet. While she was otherwise occupied, he looked quietly over her kulaks, tank top, apron and flip flops, deciding it was chimerical that she be able to still look good. After a moment she paid him some attention, looking up at his general direction and brushing her hands on her corduroy apron.

"What can I get you today?" She asked him. The words came out as if she had said them many times today. She tucked a strand of curly brown hair behind her ear and looked at him, only mildly interested in hearing his answer. She shuffled an ice tray to keep the fruit below cold and met the eyes of the man that was leaning toward her with all but "fruit connoisseur" written across his face.

"Well," his eyes traveled over a great many things, none of them berries. "What would you suggest?" The individual, clad in a pair of dirty jeans, a shirt and a cowboy hat, asked somewhat smugly. He adorned his face with an innocent half smile and leaned a little further over the stand so he could better inspect her face and so that she couldn't help but stare at his in return. "After all, you're the expert."

"Well, my answer would depend on what, exactly, you're looking to get," she said, looking him over as she spoke to him, "but I'm not so sure you know what you want," she continued.

"Oh?"

"Yes. I could suggest which make better pies or tell you which berries I prefer, but I don't think you're interested in that." She looked at him again and at his questioning look, she said, "because your eyes don't really seem to be on the fruit."

"Guilty as charged," he said, flashing another smile her way. "But I am, in fact, looking for the price of…" his eyes wandered down to the produce below him for a moment as he searched for something to say because, truth be told, he hadn't even looked at the berries yet. "…strawberries."

"The price of strawberries." She repeated with dubiety. "Are you sure that's the number you're looking for?" She asked, smiling slightly. It was the first hint of amusement she had shown so far. At his silence, she continued on. "Or is there something else you're hoping for?" One look at his face told her all that she needed to know by way of his intentions. In purple gel pen she wrote out a number on a sales receipt and underneath it was the word 'Jennifer'.

He took a paper from her and asked, "Now, there're no boyfriends I need to worry about, right? No jealous boyfriends that might go on a rampage if they heard my voice?" He delivered her a fake stern look from under the brim of his hat and from his expression it was obvious that he did not particularly care about the existence of said boyfriends—only about the chances of being caught by them.

She smiled once more and said, "I guess you'll just have to find out yourself, now, won't you?"

With a tilt of his head and a wink, a sly and pleased cowboy tilted his hat and continued on his way down a dusty, time-worn sidewalk. The cowboy flashed a coy smile back at the girl who fluttered her eyelashes and blew him a sarcastic kiss. The cowboy started to smoothly walk back to his car and soon found himself stumbling over a small dip as the time-worn sidewalk got the better of him.

Leaning against the right side of his car was another figure who looked amused. "Alright, take off the hat, Cowboy," Sam Winchester said to his brother, opening the passenger-side door of the Chevy Impala they had come in.

"No," Dean countered, holding the hat to his head and opening his door as well. He winked at the girl who was now laughing at him. Then he turned his attention back to his brother. "It makes me cool."

"Yeah," Sam agreed mockingly. "So cool that you tripped over your feet and looked like a doofus in front of a girl you just hit on. The hat is totally worth it."

"Shut up." Dean said and he took his seat behind the wheel of his Impala. After he checked how he looked in the rear view mirror, he returned his attention to Sam. "Make yourself useful. You've been hinting about a case all the way here. So what is it?"

Sam smirked and said nothing. He just shrugged and looked out the window, not releasing any information. He could almost feel Dean's annoyance growing with every millisecond of silence that ensued.

Dean rolled his eyes and delivered his brother an irritated look. "Cut the crap, Sam. Now, un-shut up and tell me what the hell we're here for."

"Fine," Sam said. He reached down and pulled up several newspaper clippings from various local papers. "Look, here in The Oregonian there've been two articles about apparent suicides that happened only a week apart. And in The Argus it's the same story just another week after. I've got some from the Eugene Weekly and even the Portland Tribune. They're all within the last three months." Sam fanned out the articles for Dean to see the number of them he had found in the papers.

"So there're a lot of depressed freaks in Oregon," Dean said, shrugging and turning his rear view mirror back to an angle that would let him see the girl in the fruit stand down the sidewalk a ways. "Nothing seems all that fishy to me."

"But in every one of these articles the family and friends say there were no indications that they would commit suicide." Sam argued and he held out an article under Dean's nose so he could read it if he wanted. Dean didn't want to. "And," Sam continued, "they maintain that each of the people that committed suicide were happy people." Sam made sure Dean was looking at him. "Happy people don't just kill themselves, Dean."

"And the families of 'happy people' don't like to think that their family members will commit suicide. There's nothing strange about it, Sam." Dean said. "It's what every article you'll ever find about suicide will say. No one wants to believe it'll happen." He fixed his collar. 'Now c'mon; we're going to California to meet with one of dad's old colleagues."

"California?" Sam repeated. He shook his head so violently that his hair flopped around. "No, we're not going to California; we're staying here in Oregon and we're investigating into this further."

"No," Dean said. "We're going to California to meet this guy that dad used to work with. He might have some idea where dad is now and if not he'll at least have information for us that will help us." Dean slipped on his "driving glasses" that he thought made him look cool.

"Look, Dean, forget about dad for a minute and listen to me." Sam demanded, turning in his seat to take a more aggressive stance. "We know the patterns and we know how this stuff works. There is something going on here and you _know_ it." Dean's silence only angered Sam further. "What I don't know is why you're willing to blow this all off for dad. We're never going to find him and you know that." His voice took on an annoyed edge. "So get a grip and think about someone else for a change."

Dean said nothing and turned to face the road. His anger bubbled just below the surface, Sam knew, but Dean did nothing to show he, too, knew it was there. He simply shifted the Impala into gear and pulled out onto the road leaving swirling clouds of dust behind. "I'm telling you there's nothing going on here and that we're _going_ to California. End of story."

Sam slouched in his seat, angry with his brother, and glared out the window at the landscape. Written all across his face was his annoyance toward his brother who was stubbornly driving them toward I-5 to head to California. He looked down at the newspaper clippings in his hand one more time before he let them fall to the floor of the car in a flurry of paper.

₪

Driving down a winding scenic road outside of Bend, Sam felt his attention drawn across the road and to the Deschutes River. Around it were gorgeous cliffs he guessed to be about fifty meters high and trees that grew at strange angles. Below them lay class-three water rapids and strong currents that tore over and around sharp rocks. It held his attention for quite some time and he watched the river twist and bubble around the obstacles in its way as Dean continued driving.

After forty-five minutes, however, even the mighty Deschutes River had lost its appeal and Sam could feel himself slipping into a half-asleep daze. He settled himself down in the seat and stretched his legs as much as he could given his confined space. As his eyelids started to fall down over his eyes, the sound of wailing tires and burning gears met his ears and he sat up, twisting around in his seat in time to see a red Honda Civic flash past them on the road.

Dean swerved the Impala to let the driver past and avoid being rear ended. The Impala's tires squealed in protest and the maneuver. He glanced at his speedometer which told him he was going a solid 45 mph. This maniac had to be going at least 65 mph if not faster to flash past them so quickly.

"Geez, idiot!" Dean yelled at the driver, slamming the heel of his palm into the horn and letting out a long blast. It wouldn't have made any difference if he hadn't honked—the driver was nearly a half mile ahead of them already. He pulled the car back toward the lane they should be in to avoid hitting any possible oncoming traffic. "Where the hell d'you think you're going?" Dean settled back into his seat and let his shoulders relax a little as the Honda peeled out of sight.

Sam knew now that he would not be falling back asleep. Even though nothing had really happened, he now had enough adrenaline running through him that relaxing, let alone sleeping, would not come soon. So much for his afternoon nap.

"Crazy driver," he said without any real reason. He just felt like saying something and clearing away the slowly forming terse silence so he offered up the first words that came to mind.

"Damn maniac," Dean corrected, navigating along the twisting and winding country road, checking his rear view mirror a lot more often than he had been minutes before. "People like that shouldn't be driving anyway. Dangerous driving."

"Like you should talk," Sam pointed out, thinking of a great number of times where he was sure Dean had been the one called the "damn maniac".

"Shut up."

The terse silence returned, but this time Sam didn't try to break it. He returned to staring out at the landscape that had bored him so well earlier. The river still looked like it had half a zillion miles ago. Watery. Wet. Rushing. The landscape he had appreciated earlier in the day now just seemed to be boring and dull.

"We'll be on Highway 97 soon," Dean said after a while. Sam didn't really care. He was just pleased to see that Dean didn't enjoy the silence any more than he was. "After that we'll just ride it south for a few hundred miles until we hit I-5. It's all smooth sailing from there."

"Great." Sam offered, still not particularly interested. The silence grew heavier as the minutes passed by. Dean tried to put in a tape somewhere down the road and Sam promptly ejected it and threw it out the window. This action displeased Dean. The upside was that the tape was gone and it gave him and Dean something to "talk" about for a few minutes. The downside was that the silence grew ever heavier afterward.

A glance at the fading LED clock on the console showed Sam that it was 4:00 PM. Sam had no idea how long they had been driving because he hadn't paid attention to what time they had left Bend. He was about to ask Dean when ahead his eyes were pulled away from the clock and his mind from the question he was forming.

"What the hell," Dean said, sparing Sam the need to do so as well. Smoking and hissing, a red Honda Civic was smashed squarely into a large evergreen tree at an odd angle compared to the road. The only way for the car to be positioned like that was if the driver had turned the car and aimed for the tree specifically. Dean pulled the Impala over close to the car and he and Sam rushed out. But as soon as they got to the car they could both tell that something was amiss.

"Where's the driver?" Sam asked. The driver's seat was empty and there wasn't even a drop of blood, despite the fact that the hood of the car had smashed in like an accordion and reduced the space in the cab by half. There's no way someone would have been able to just walk out of that.

"Do I _look_ like I know?" Dean demanded.

"He had to have gotten out before the car hit the tree," Sam mused, walking around the car once. "There's no way he could have simply skipped out after the car hit."

"So he bailed before the car hit." Dean said. "What d'you think? Stuck drive shaft?"

"I dunno," Sam said.

The two of them spread out a ways, still within shouting distance, and tried to figure out where the driver had gone. There were no footprints or articles of clothing or personal belongings anywhere. It was like the driver hadn't even been there. Dean was about to tell Sam to just forget it and to get back in the car when his brother's yells caught his attention.

"Hey!" Sam yelled, starting to sprint off toward the Deschutes. "HEY!" He yelled louder, cupping his hand around his mouth to amplify the sound. Sam shook his head and continued, yelling every few seconds. Dean took off after him, trying to see what had captured his brother's attention and to stop him before he got distracted and got hurt.

"Sam! SAM STOP!" Dean hollered as loud as he could. He felt his feet slip on semi-damp leaves and he barely managed to keep himself upright. He sped after Sam, falling into a sprint now, too.

Eyes locked on a man in a brown leather jacket and tweed pants, Sam didn't even hear his brother's yells or curses as he nearly fell. He locked his focus in on the person that was heading for the river at an alarmingly fast pace. "HEY!" Sam yelled again, doing everything he could to make his voice loud and commanding. "STOP! STOP!" When it was apparent that his yells were doing nothing to stop the man, he gave up yelling and tried to run even faster.

Dean thundered after the pair of them. He now saw what his brother was chasing as well as his brother. Twigs snapped loudly under his feet and now he was yelling at the figure, too. The noise they generated was quite impressive. As Dean kept running and yelling he came to a conclusion. Something wasn't right. The person wasn't even reacting. Not even so much as a glance back in their direction.

Trees flashed past each brother's peripheral vision. Their car and the scene of the Honda's collision with the tree now lay nearly a half mile back. Nothing was in focus except the single target they were both locked onto: the man that was heading for the cliff that hung over the Deschutes River.

Sam was yelling incoherently now, trying to get the person's attention. He continued yelling right up until he saw the person disappear right over the cliff's edge and plunge down toward the river. He scrambled to the edge in time to see the person disappear under the water's surface and get swept away underneath the current. Sam stayed there at the edge of the cliff, breathing hard and staring in utter disbelief at the last place he had seen the man's head disappear. He waited a moment to see the person's head come back up above the water but after a full thirty seconds had gone by with no sign of him, Sam realized that it wasn't going to happen.

He turned around. "Dean," At first he didn't see his brother and started to feel the beginnings on panic set in when his eyes fell on his brother.

Dean was already on his cell phone, trying to explain where they were to who Sam presumed were 911 operators. Their eyes met and Sam knew Dean was in just as much shock as he was. He could also tell Dean had no explanation for what had just happened. He wasn't sure which part bothered him more; the fact that it had happened or the fact that there was no reason it _should_ have happened.

Sam shook his head and turned his attention back to the river.

"What the hell."

₪

"I'm tellin' you," Dean said, "we were driving down the road and this red Honda came flashing like a bat outta Hell from nowhere and he almost rear ended us." The officer nodded and motioned for him to continue. They had already told this story twice, but each time a new officer had insisted they tell it again and let them take notes.

"Then we got up here and saw the aftermath of his little competition with the tree." The officer talking to Dean and Sam was looking over his notes again. The dusty colors of dusk had started to fall over the landscape and the flashing police and ambulance lights were overpowering the colors of the sky. Sam tried to work up an expression that made him look both shocked and worried, but this scene was becoming all too familiar to him.

"We got out looking for him," Sam said, still sounding a little breathless. He could feel his head shaking slightly in disbelief as he spoke to the officer, recounting what had happened earlier. He still couldn't look properly shocked. "And I saw him running toward the river. We took off after him, yelling and screaming and he just… ran over the edge of the cliff and went in." Sam glanced over at the river. "I never saw him come back up.""

"What was he wearing?" The officer asked. His pen was poised to write.

"A brown leather coat and ugly pants," Dean said promptly. Sam treaded on his toes and Dean pulled them away, mouthing "ow".

The officer looked annoyed and said, "can you describe them better than 'ugly'? I'm afraid we can't determine everything on that kind of description."

"They were tweed," Sam said before Dean had a chance to say anything else brilliant. "I think he had blonde hair." The officer closed his notepad and headed over to the inconsolable girlfriend of the man that had gone over. She had filed a stolen car report that morning for a red Honda Civic and the only reason they had found her was because they ran the license plate's numbers through the police files upon getting to the scene.

"I don't know _why_ he did this," she sobbed, talking to the same officer that had been talking to Sam and Dean the third time. "He was happy. _We_ were happy together. We were going to be going on vacation to Mexico next month. Everything was planned out. He wasn't depressed or…" She continued talking but Sam had stopped listening.

Sam took the opportunity to pull Dean a little aside.

"What?" Dean asked, sounding slightly exasperated. He let his eyes flicker across Sam's face. "I know that look. What do you want?"

"He was happy, Dean." Sam said, gesturing vaguely back at the guy's girlfriend. "A girlfriend, a life, a vacation. He had a future, Dean." Sam paced around so that he was looking squarely at Dean. "And you saw him. Something wasn't right. He didn't act normally."

"Yeah," Dean ceded, giving Sam at least one point. "Something was weird about how he acted."

"Happy people don't commit suicide." Sam said.

"Happy people don't commit suicide…" Dean repeated. Dean looked out over the scene; investigators on the cliff, around the Honda and talking to the guy's girlfriend. Tape connecting trees together. Divers in the river trying to find a body that had to be halfway across the state by now.

"So are we staying?" Sam asked.

"We're staying." Dean said.


	2. The Interview

**Title:** Blindly Walking

**Summary:** Sam is convinced something strange is happening in Oregon; Dean not so much. A suicide before their eyes convinces Dean that something is going on. From suicide, strange pictures and manipulated perceptions, the Winchesters find themselves doing what they do best.

**Promise:** I _still _promise I will keep Sam and Dean in character, provide **absolutely no wincest **and stay true to Supernatural canon. _If I do not_ you are freely given permission to tell me so in any manner of nasty ways in a review. If I spell more than two or three things wrong, let a piano strike me from the sky. So help me Fan Fiction Gods. Amen.

**Reviewers:** Thank you to: Julian Read, lilbaby6688, Halcyon Impulsion, BlackasNightColdasDeath7, rascalandremi, kaysea, Perfect.Impluse, Minako Mikoto and hearts-4-stars.

₪

_Saturday, 8:00 PM_

"So what do you think it was?"

The question hung heavy in the air as Dean drove the car back the way they had come, heading for the exit they had passed a while ago for La Pine, Oregon. Sam had thrown the question out there simply because he had no answer himself. The growing stillness told him that Dean had no answer, either. Though it didn't surprise him that Dean had no answer, he couldn't help but feel a sort of muted disappointment.

"Well, look," Dean said after a while. His words came across as if he had been thinking about what to say ever since the guy had gone into the river. It was an odd sound to hear coming from his brother's mouth and it made Sam stop just a moment longer to think about what was going on. Not that there was very much for him to consider at the moment.

Dean glanced at Sam and pulled off the winding road to the La Pine exit, heading for the town. Their road now ran perpendicular to the Deschutes and they no longer were constantly reminded of the place they had seen a man vanish. The scenery changed to "industrialized" very quickly and it made both brothers wonder what had happened to the landscape they had been on not so long ago.

Dean pulled into the right lane and headed for a patch of motels and other stores. He favored Sam with another glance and drew breath to speak. "We know something wasn't right. I mean, even if he _was_ a psycho-crazy—"

"—depressed man—" Sam corrected. Dean continued, undaunted, as if Sam hadn't even spoken.

"—he would have shown some reaction to being chased by a couple of guys he almost ran down on the road, right? Or he would have had some kind of reaction _at all_."

"Right," Sam offered Dean, prodding for more. So far Dean's general thoughts were mirroring his own and he was hoping that Dean might come up with something Sam himself had not already thought.

"And that whole deal with him trying to obliterate my freaking car," Dean continued, "it was like he didn't even know we were there. I don't know _how_, but he had no idea that we were there. There's no way anyone lucid could drive that insanely on purpose."

"That's what I thought," Sam said. "It was like he wasn't really aware of anything around him. It might explain why he crashed into the tree how he did."

"But there's still a chance he was just a depressed-crazy that wanted to die," Dean said. "He could have been seriously looking for a spectacular car crash to put himself out with and he had to move onto the next best thing when that didn't work out."

"So how do you explain the fact that he got out of the car before it crashed?" Sam probed. If Dean wanted to stick with this theory, he sure as hell was going to have to justify himself first.

"Hell, I don't know, Sam," Dean said vehemently. "I'm just trying to make a point right now."

"Well what is it?"

"We can't just decide there's something going on here because we _want_ to. We've been wrong before." Dean took the time at the stoplight to give Sam a pointed and stern look. "We don't need to risk ourselves or other people for something we don't even know about yet. So let's not run into this like crazies."

"We _are_ crazies," Sam pointed out flatly.

"Well… yeah, okay, but still."

"Still what?"

"I still say we can't decide this is unnatural just because it kinda sorta seems that way," Dean amended very ineffectively.

"We can't decide it's _not_, either," Sam said. "Just because you want to think it's _not_ something, doesn't mean it isn't. It just means you're stubborn."

"Well, then I guess we can't decide anything at all." Dean decided indefinitely.

"…duh." Sam replied.

Sam's response earned no reply. Dean pulled the car into the parking lot of a motel, not bothering to park particularly straight and turned off the Impala's engine. It sputtered a moment and then quieted down, hoping for a rest after the long days of traveling that it had been through.

Sam looked out the window and stopped thinking about what Dean had said; he looked first at the cracked pavement below the car. The cracks spidered out like fingers of nothingness that were slowly enveloping the pavement and pulling it down. He then looked at the garden that was going to seed and turning into more of a jungle than a garden. Finally he turned his attention to the motel itself. There was not a sign of movement or life anywhere about the motel. No rooms had lights on and the pool looked like it had become a water ecosystem a decade or so ago.

Sam hesitated, and then looked at Dean. "Is it even still operating?"

"_Yes_," Dean said as if it was the most obvious thing ever. The gestured to a neon Open sign that was flickering in the window of a building marked 'A min stra ion'.

"Aminstraion," Sam read as Dean went over to the building to secure them a room. "Great. We're staying high class as always. Four out of five roaches recommend this place." He stretched his legs and watched for Dean to come back out of the 'Aminstraion' building.

Dean leaned over the dusty counter and then stopped and brushed off the dust bunnies that had instantly formed across his chest. He decided not to lean on the counter anymore and simply stood in front of it.

"Good evening," he said to catch the attention of the old and possibly decaying man behind the desk. While he had wanted to get his attention, Dean had not intended to startle the man as he did. The man jumped, obviously surprised to see someone standing in the office, and knocked a large number of things off the dusty, grimy desk.

"Hello," he wheezed, coughing and blowing dust in Dean's face with his breath. As he moved his joints cracked and the floorboards beneath him creaked. "Gas station's down the road if you take a right."

"I'm not looking for a gas station," Dean said. He opened his mouth to say something more, but the old wheezy man cut in.

"Are you lost?"

"No," Dean said, once again beating dust from his person. He was beginning to see that combating the dust was futile. "I'd like to get a room for myself and my partner for a few days. Do you have anything open?"

"In this motel?" The man asked.

"Yeah. Do you have a room?"

The old man wheezed in a fashion that Dean thought was a laugh, but he wasn't completely sure. "Do we have a room?" He repeated, laugh-wheezing harder. "We always have a room." The old man slowly got himself up from his chair and shuffled through a drawer for a minute before pulling out an old, rusty brass key. "Always a room, never a guest." He handed the key over to Dean and reached for something else across the desk.

"We've got no air conditioning, no room service, no housekeeping," the guy started rattling off as he wrote out a receipt. "No security, no pool house, no sauna," he continued, tearing the receipt off of the pad and handing the paper to Dean to sign. After pausing to think of a name to make up, Dean signed the receipt made of carbon paper that had to be at least twenty years old.

The man drew a slow breath, "no transportation services, no refrigerators and no electricity." He didn't make to draw another breath, so Dean assumed him to be finished.

"Do you have flushing toilets?" He asked hesitantly almost afraid of the answer.

"Sometimes." The old man answered.

That answer was even worse.

₪

"Alright, c'mon Sammy," Dean said, throwing open Sam's door and half pulling him from the Impala. Sam didn't seem to share his enthusiasm at having procured a motel room for them. "We've got a room."

Sam tried to work up an excited facial expression and only managed to look slightly nauseous.

"You should be impressed with how I manage to always find us places to stay," Dean said with a hint of offense in his voice. "After all, if I didn't find us places to stay, we'd be stuck living in the Impala."

"And we _so_ wouldn't want _that_," Sam said with as much sarcasm as he could muster. "It might be dirty in the _Impala_."

"Dude, just shut up," Dean said. He stuck the old brass key into the door and turned it sharply. Absolutely nothing happened. Dean tried to pull the key back out of the lock to try again but it wouldn't budge at all. He tried again to turn the key and still there was no movement.

"Great place," Sam said thoughtfully. In his pensiveness, he looked up at the eaves of the roof above the door to their room which were dripping brown sludge to the ground below. Sam made a face at the sludge and turned his attention back to Dean trying to open the door. He looked back in time to see Dean break the doorknob right off the door completely in one, violent jerk.

"Dean!" Sam said.

"Oh, good," Dean said, looking pleased with himself suddenly and not sharing Sam's shock whatsoever. "Now I don't have to worry about losing the pesky key to this damn place. It's like having one of those card things instead; Stress-free."

"No, it's like having a door you can't lock and a brother who's an idiot," Sam corrected as the two of them made their way into the place they would now call home for some time.

The inside of the motel room was worse than the outside could have possibly described. The place had very obviously been put together with materials bought at their cheapest prices. The flooring had run out two thirds of the way through and the red Berber carpet turned to blue linoleum. The walls were covered in yellow and green striped wallpaper and the lights were old, dusty chandeliers.

"Nice," Dean said, nodding and pressing his lips together in a thoughtful manner.

"If 'nice' means ugly as hell." Sam said.

"Who's to say it doesn't?" Dean asked, sitting down on one of the two beds. A cloud of dust and God only knew what else plumed out from the bedding and the mattress. Dean sneezed and Sam laughed a little. "'Nice means' dirty and dusty and pretty damn fugly," Dean modified.

Sam and Dean soon had what few worldly possessions they owned set about the room. Dean's phone, as always, slept on the nightstand next to his head. Ever since that one time he had always hoped to be woken by the sound of his phone ringing by his head. Always since that one time it never had. It did nothing to diminish the seed of hope that he felt waiting in his heart every night he went to bed.

"We should get some shut-eye," Dean told Sam, who was eyeing his bed warily.

"What if this place really has bed bugs that can bite?" Sam mused, peeking under the blankets on his bed for safety's sake.

"Just let me know if I have to chase the monsters under your bed," Dean said.

"Sure, Dean. Whatever."

₪

"So we're just going to go knockin' on her door and ask to talk with her about her boyfriend that just committed suicide _yesterday_," Sam repeated. He was currently staring at his brother in utter disbelief.

"You got anything better?" Dean demanded turning to look at Sam as they sat a block and a half away from the house their mystery man's girlfriend was living in. Dean seemed quite set on going through with his plan as he had already decided it.

"Uh, _yeah_," Sam said. "Absolutely anything besides _that_ is better."

"Unless we're going to _talk_ to people, I see no freaking way that we're going to be able to figure out if this is _weird _or not." Dean pulled his key from the ignition and got out of the car. "So are you coming, or are you gonna let me fly this one solo?"

"How stupid do you think _I_ am?" Sam replied, reluctantly getting out of the car, too. "But I still say this is the stupidest idea _ever_."

"I'm sure you won't feel that way for too long," Dean told him genially, patting him on the arm.

"Yeah, because you'll think of something dumber and I'll have no choice but to award it first place." Sam decided.

"Just shut up and let me do the talking," Dean told Sam. "Between the two of us, we both know I'm the better one for that."

"Yeah, if you're looking for a night on the town," Sam retorted. He and Dean made it to the front porch of the house. "You have got to be the most tactless person I know, and I happen to know a lot of people. We're going to let _me_ talk."

Dean reached out and rang the blue and red doorbell. Sam was giving Dean an "eat your tongue and shut up" look. Dean didn't seem to take any notice of it.

"Like hell I am," Dean said. "If you think your dam—" The door knob turned and the door swung open and Dean switched gears mid-sentence. "—Hello." He said, trying to find the proper amount of a smile to put on his face. He hoped he had chosen the right amount. Drawing in breath, he once again found himself standing with his mouth open and not the one speaking.

"Oh," she said, looking at them. At first she seemed kind of confused and Dean took the moment she gave them as she tried to place their faces to look her over. Though she hadn't been crying recently, it was apparent that she was not having a very good day and probably wasn't done with the crying just yet. She had a look about her that Dean recognized only too well. "You two… you were the ones that called, right?"

"Yeah, we saw—" Dean stopped and switched his sentence after a powerful glower from his brother. "—we're really sorry." He said. A glance at Sam this time told him that this was a much more acceptable route to take the conversation down.

"Yeah, well…" the girl trailed off, still standing in the doorway and looking at them. It was extremely evident that she had nowhere to take the sentence and was talking for talking's sake.

"Listen, I know it's a sore spot," Sam said, putting on his best, "Gosh, I'm so sorry" face. "And I know this is hard, but after what we saw…" He trailed off and let her fill in the blanks with whatever she felt like.

A sigh escaped her lips and she shook her head as if to clear it. "Oh, I see." She brushed hair from her face and looked over their faces one more time. Each brother tried his hardest to look harmlessly curious. After another silence she said, "Of course. Here, come in," she said, stepping back and opening her doorway for them. Dean looked at Sam. Both of them silently exchanged a look that communicated surprise at her consent. They kept this thought to themselves.

For a few moments, each brother let his eyes wander about the room. It was a very cold room in how it was decorated. Black, white and steel-metal colors were everywhere with the occasional splash of "modern art" on the walls and floor. Glass end tables sat next to the chairs and couches. There was not a place in the room that emanated warmth and happiness. Dean had no idea how she could stand to live here.

Sam set to work talking with her and trying to establish some manner of rapport while Dean let his eyes wander around the living room more, this time looking at the smaller things that were lying around. Everywhere he looked there were pictures of this girl and her boyfriend. Happy pictures by the lake, happy pictures on the beach, happy pictures any damn where you pleased. This didn't exactly scream suicide-case to him.

"…really would like to help you get to the bottom of this," Dean heard Sam say. He decided he should probably tune in at some point and hear some of the BS his brother was feeding to the girl. "But we can't do that if you don't agree. We don't _want_ to do anything you won't agree to."

"But there's nothing to get to the bottom of," she pointed out, letting out a stream of air as she paused. "He just… ran himself off a cliff and died. It doesn't get very much simpler than that, you know."

"I know," Sam told her, nodding, "but you," he glanced at Dean before he said, "and we," Dean nodded, "don't think it was just some wanton suicide. You've said yourself that he had no reason to have done what he did. And we know things were a little on the strange side yesterday. If we can offer our services to you and try to give you some closure, we'll feel like we've done our job."

There was a pregnant pause where she looked over her shoulder to a picture on the glass side table. Dean couldn't even begin to fathom why she would keep all these things around her that reminded her of her boyfriend until he thought of how long it took Sam to give up everything that reminded him of Jessica. He determined that it was a slow process.

"I dunno," she said slowly and Sam could see that she was still trying to decide. "I mean, we can see how it goes, but I can't make you any promises."

"Of course," Sam said, reaching over and patting her hand gently. "I know," he said with this really strange tone that seemed to ooze with compassion. Dean was suddenly glad he had let Sam take over with the touchy-feely crap. "We will back off _as soon_ as you say so. It's all in your control. We just feel connected now because of how things happened, y'know?"

"I guess," she conceded. It seemed that his demurely compassionate tone was doing more for her than his words were.

"So let's start this properly, shall we?" Sam asked, trying to sound just slightly more jovial. He held out a hand to her. "I'm Sam Johnson," he told her smoothly. Dean used all his willpower not to roll his eyes at the last name. She took his hand and shook it. After a brief handshake he directed her attention to Dean. "And this is my brother, Dean Johnson," he said.

"Nice to meet you, both of you," she said. "I'm Karen Whitney." She looked at them a minute after they exchanged all their handshakes and "nice to meet you"s. When they made no move to speak, she continued with, "And so what is it, exactly, that you said you did?"

"We didn't," Sam said.

"But you said, 'we'll feel like we've done our job' earlier," she told him.

"Oh," said Dean, his voice oozing with an air of forgetfulness to cover the half-lies that were to follow. "We're private investigators of a sort," Dean offered. "We deal mostly with… grief counseling and helping people piece together the reasoning behind unexpected deaths and suicides. So this is sort of right up our alley."

"Really; so you do this sort of thing a lot," she said. She crossed her legs and looked at each of them in turn. She was listening to them now with a sort of hunger that Sam knew they would not be able to satiate. "So you tell me. What _do_ you think is going on?"

"Uh, well we—see we—" Dean was sputtering and Sam decided it was his turn to talk again.

"It's hard to say. We've only gotten a small, _small_ piece of the whole story. I'd rather not give you any false truths until we can feel more confident in what it is that we tell you."

"Ah," she said. She didn't seem completely convinced, but she didn't seem to be shutting down, either. Sam allowed himself and internal sigh of relief. "So where in Oregon do you operate from? Obviously not in La Pine; I'd know. Are you from the Portland area?"

"We're not from around here," Sam told her. "This is a little out of our way; we just seemed to end up here in the right place at the right time."

"We're from Colorado," Dean added.

"Where in Colorado?" She asked. Her questions were not digging; she just seemed keen to avoid talking about her boyfriend for as long as possible. Sam and Dean could tell and they granted her this wish.

"Albany," Dean said.

"Albany?" She repeated. "I thought that was in New York…?" Dean had an "oh shit" look all across his face which signaled to Sam that it was, once again, time to clean up his mess.

"It is," Sam said. "But it's also a really, _really_ small town in southern Colorado. It doesn't surprise me you haven't heard of it. It's like, what, six people and a mailbox, right Dean?" Dean nodded. "We're hoping to get a new building in Denver soon." He smiled slightly. "I'm sure that one rings more of a bell."

Sam allowed himself a second inward sigh in relief as he saw a smile grace her features.

He and Dean fell into a routine of asking about general things they really didn't care about. The rapport was the most important part of the meeting—without it they were not going to be able to get anywhere. They slowly learned a large number of things: her boyfriend's name—Derek—his interests, about their relationship. It continued on for quite some time and Dean even pretended to be taking some notes which were really a brainstorm of the fast food he had seen around La Pine so far. After a while, though, the question they had both been dying to know finally came out into the open.

"Has there been anything… strange happening lately?" Sam asked gently, trying his best to make the question fit in with the flow of the rest of the conversation.

"No," she said immediately, shaking her head. "He was completely healthy—in fact, he just had a doctor's appointment about a week ago. He was gearing up for our vacation and I found out a few days ago he was going to propose to me…" she trailed off a moment and the brothers gave her the time to silently mourn this loss.

After a while, Dean said, "we don't mean obvious things." At her quizzical expression he continued with, "anything that doesn't seem normal. Trivial things, even. Was he having nightmares? Hearing voices? Talking about strange things?"

"You think he was schizophrenic?" She asked. Dean was quite surprised that this was the first response that she came to. "I can assure you he was mentally just as healthy and stable as he was physically. I'd know if there was something going on with his head. We were always together."

Dean looked down at his notepad and barely whispered, "That could make a man mental."

"No," Sam said, cutting in over Dean's comment. "We're not suggesting that he was schizophrenic. We're just trying to start jogging your mind, get you thinking. Was there absolutely _anything_ that's happened recently that seems to be strange to you?"

While Dean lost interest in Sam trying to probe information from Karen that she didn't want to share, he reached over and found a Costco 1-hr Photo packet of pictures that was lying on the glass table closest to him. He opened it right on up and the negatives fell out on his lap. Karen stopped what she was saying to Sam and looked at Dean who tried to look properly sheepish.

"Oh, those are from a looong time ago," she said, almost as if she had forgotten about them. "We took in his camera last week and had them Costco develop the pictures from our backpacking trip last year. Right after that trip we had gotten a digital camera, so that roll of film wasn't finished, but we wanted the pictures. We took a whole bunch of random pictures of the two of us to finish it off."

Dean was stuffing the negatives back into their pouch when he saw one single negative slip to the floor. That was weird, because the rest of them were together in bunches of five. Karen found this strange, too.

"Did you rip it?" She asked.

"No, it looks like it was cut." He found the other three negatives that made up all of a strip save for one negative. "Do you have any idea what negative is missing?" Karen shook her head and reached for the packet. As she started looking through the pictures a look of dawning memory came across her face.

"What?" Sam asked.

"There was this one weird picture that came out with the batch." She said. "It was crooked—almost perfectly crooked—and we couldn't recognize anything in the picture. Not like we could match it up, though. The entire picture was made in hues of red." She paused, as if thinking about the picture. "It was a really creepy picture, though."

"What was in the picture?" Dean asked.

"I dunno. It looked like his front room, but he had never had it decorated like that. It looked like it was from, oh, I dunno, the 70s maybe. Just the style of carpet and the couch and stuff. And on the couch there was this sort of foggy figure. I guess you could think it was a ghost, if you believe that sort of stuff." She half-laughed.

Sam felt compelled to do the same. "Do you have another copy of that picture?"

"No," Karen said. "I haven't even thought about it since we got the pictures back. Derek must have thrown it out because of how much it scared me."

"Do you _know_ that he got rid of the picture?" Sam pressed. He knew he had to be careful or she would wonder why he was so interested about this picture.

"Well, no," she said, "but I've been complaining about my nightmares lately and I know they're about that picture. I'd wake up screaming and the nights he wasn't with me I'd call him early in the morning, just so I had someone to talk to."

"It scared you that badly?"

"I had nightmares about it for days until they suddenly just… went away."

"When did they go away?" Dean asked her.

"The night before last," she said. "So…" she paused a moment, "the night before he died. I just didn't have a nightmare and I had for every night before that."

"About the picture?"

"Yes."

₪

Dean stopped the car as soon as they got around the corner and out of sight of Karen's house. Dean completely turned the car off and massaged his temples for a moment, waiting for Sam to say something first.

"So you think it's this picture?" Sam asked. He was staring out the front window right now, not really focusing his eyes on any object in particular. His head was swimming with far too many thoughts to keep them straight right now.

"What else could it be?" Dean answered. "Honestly."

"There's no way to know," Sam said. "Especially without even having a copy of this picture. We're working with basically nothing, still."

"But we've got a lead." Dean pointed out.

"But we're sitting ducks," Sam argued. "We've got to sit around, waiting and watching, until we can find another suicide that fits the bill and we can find a copy of that picture."

"Then I guess we're gonna wait," Dean said. He flashed Sam and halfway grin. "After all, we've got a great place to stay."

"Oh shut up."

₪

**All Reviewers**_: Have no fear! I promise_ to continue writing this story (I'm having too much fun not to) and I _promise_ to do all I can to keep our beloved boys IN character and not in love with each other. Canon rawks. Heh.

Stay Tuned!

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	3. The Photograph

**Title:** Blindly Walking

**Summary:** Sam is convinced something strange is happening in Oregon; Dean not so much. A suicide before their eyes convinces Dean that something is going on. From suicide, strange pictures and manipulated perceptions, the Winchesters find themselves doing what they do best.

**Promise:** If I break canon or make our dear boys love each other a _little too much_, I pray that the FF Gods will smite me good and hard until I can never write it again. I ask them to guide me down a path of good grammar and punctuation and never to let me fail. Amen!

**Reviewers:** Thank you to: hearts-4-stars, Minako Mikoto and Julian Read.

**If you're reading, please take a moment to review. I'd really appreciate it.**

₪

_Monday, 11:30 AM_

Dean and Sam sat in a table in the back of a coffee shop, the latter more awake than the former. Both sat with impeccably horrific posture and their hands were clutching coffee of his choice—one a double shot espresso with whipped cream, the other with a caramel macchiato and cinnamon. The silence was only punctured by the sipping noises they made as they consumed their drinks or by other people in the shop. It was a Winchester Quiet Moment.

"Sooner or later we have to talk about it," Sam said, eying his brother and almost daring him to disagree.

"I was going for later." Dean replied nonchalantly, taking another swig of his drink and making no motion toward talking about what was beginning to seem like a case. Sam's eyebrows shot up without seeking permission from Sam's brain.

"Dean, people are dying left and right and you expect me to let you finish your coffee in peace?" Sam asked, feeling more incredulous than anything else. He glanced around to make sure no one had heard him.

"Yes, Sam, I do."

Sam drummed his fingers on the small table, being as annoying as he could right up until Dean finished his coffee. Dean made sure to take an extra long time taking his last few sips of coffee until he was sure Sam was about ready to throw his own drink at him. Then he decided it was time to play Sammy's way.

"You're _done_," Sam said forcefully, pulling the cup from Dean's mouth and setting it violently down on the table with a _thunk_.

"Okay, okay! Don't get your panties in a bunch. Sheesh." Dean gave Sam an older brother look and then settled differently in his seat so he could lean in and talk with Sam without his voice carrying. "So whatcha got?"

"What do you mean, what've I got?" Sam demanded.

"Well, you seemed so antsy to talk about the case. I thought maybe you might have had something helpful and interesting to say. Apparently I was wrong?" Dean gave him an innocently questioning look, but Sam could see right through it.

"This is the part where we bounce ideas around," Sam said pointedly, trying to keep annoyed gesturing to a minimum. "And the part where you pretend not to be an idiot and we come to some kind of conclusion."

"Alright, alright. Man, you need to chill sometimes. A lot of times, really, but I'd settle for sometimes." Dean flashed Sam a half smile.

"Dean." Sam was getting annoyed now.

"Okay, so this red picture," Dean said, cutting Sam's wrath short and bringing the conversation sharply back to the case. His "focus face" was starting to appear and his forehead was wrinkling with the effort of thinking. "What the hell do you even think it is?"

"I don't know what to think of it," Sam said, relaxing back in his chair and letting his mind drift back to the amount of information they had garnered. "It's just some red, crooked picture that scared Jennifer and looks suspicious. That's not a whole lot to go on, nor is it much of a basis for any kind of case that I can think of."

"Then maybe you're thinking of it wrong," Dean said, a truly thoughtful look crossed his features.

"Then tell me what's right. How are we supposed to be thinking of this?" Sam said, sitting back and crossing his arms, waiting for Dean to explain himself.

"You're looking at the picture as a cause," Dean said. He pulled a napkin over to himself and doodled something Sam couldn't see. "You're looking at it like it has to be the thing that's making other events take place. Don't do that."

"Then what is it?"

"I don't know, man," Dean said. "But it just can't be what's causing normal, happy people to kill themselves. It just doesn't work."

"So you're saying the photo is irrelevant?" Sam asked. He had no idea what Dean was even thinking anymore, which didn't really separate this moment from a large majority of the time he spent with his brother.

"No, I'm saying it's something different. But it's definitely relevant." Dean said as he and Sam left the coffeehouse. Sam found that he had plenty to think about.

₪

_Tuesday, 7:30 _AM

Dean walked into their hotel room and slapped a newspaper down next to Sam, who was sitting at a table and reading through some research material both from their father and the internet. Sam was getting nowhere and it frustrated him. He glanced up and caught the expression on Dean's face.

"Dude, wha—" Sam started to ask. Dean cut in, not giving Sam even the smallest amount of time to finish.

"It happened again," He said, pointing to a particular article on the page of newspaper closest to Sam's face. Sam's eyes slid quickly over the main parts of the article, trying to get information. Dean didn't give him the time.

"I'll tell you. Happy guy, great life, fiancé, the whole nine yards. Again. And then he killed himself. It fits everything we've been seeing in patterns so far."

"And you think it's the same precisely? You think it's related to this string we don't know is real or not?" Sam asked. He hated to think of the hypocritical role reversal that was happening here, but if they were wrong they could further damage an already grief-stricken woman.

"Yeah, I do," Dean said. "And I'll be damned if I'm gonna let this picture disappear again."

Sam wanted to argue with him. He wanted to try and make Dean see reason and think a little more about his actions before they went gallivanting off in pursuit of a strange picture they had no evidence of whatsoever. He _wanted_ to.

"Where to?" Sam asked, the tone of resignation creeping into his words. He could see that even if he found some reasonable doubt for his strange feeling, Dean wasn't going to listen to a single thing he said. Dean already had his mind made up.

"Our favorite place. A town just off the Deschutes."

₪

The Impala roared up a rolling cement and cobblestone driveway that led their gaze straight to the front of a well-made and Victorian style home. Sam could feel his breath catch in his throat as he slowly considered what was going on.

"Dean…"

No response.

Sam and Dean hadn't even taken time to collaborate a story about why they might be knocking on the door of a woman that had just lost her fiancé. They were simply planning to barge in and demand to see a picture? Sam thought not. Not that he was thinking a whole lot of anything. In fact, neither of them even thought much of their bold actions as they walked up to the front of her home through a nicely manicured lawn and cared for garden. It wasn't until the sound of the doorbell emanated out from the belly of the house that Sam even realized they had no justification for what they were doing here.

"Dean—"

"Shh."

The deep red colored door swung open and an old and angry-looking man's face met their eyes. His posture was crumpled and his hair was wiry. Though he had anger on his face, there was definite loss in his eyes. He looked the pair of them over and finally grunted, "What?"

"Hi," Dean said, trying to balance morose and pleasant mannerisms. "Are you Mister…" a slight pause made Sam want to wince and he silently prayed for Dean to have a burst of brilliance that could last, oh, five minutes.

"…Evans?" Dean asked after a small delay.

"Who're you?" The man demanded. It was hard to tell whether or not he believed Dean. In fact, it was hard to tell much of anything other than the fact that this man didn't want them here.

"We were pool buddies of John's," Dean said smoothly. Sam nodded. "We're here to talk with Melissa, maybe do what we can to comfort her." Dean was convincing, even Sam had to give him that. They garnered no reply.

The old man was unresponsive long enough that Sam was considering forcing Dean to leave with him and run to the Impala before the man magically had a shotgun. Eventually they got a reaction, though not an expected one.

"Fuck off."

While not the reaction they had wanted, it was enough to gain the attention of Melissa Evans who had been within the house. Her figure appeared behind the old man, first as a shadow then as a person.

"Who is it, daddy?" She asked quietly, blinking and brushing hair away.

"Some assholes that want to talk to you. I'm just fixin' to get rid of them."

The woman behind her father shoved her way in front of him. Squinting at the sunlight that was now infiltrating her eyes, she said, "Who are you?" Her voice was small and quavering and it was obvious to Dean and Sam that this woman was not finished with her grieving yet. They were interrupting her.

"I'm Sam and this is my buddy Ken," Dean said. Sam had no choice but to hold his breath and go along for the ride. "We were, uh, old friends of John—pool and stuff. We wanted to come by and see if there was anything we could do."

She looked at the two of them, her eyes threatening to let all of their tears spill out the second the surface tension broke. She was the perfect picture of a mourning woman and Dean could tell that Sam wanted to try and "connect" with her again. They didn't have time for that.

"We wouldn't come to talk to you if we didn't think it was important," Sam told her earnestly, meeting her eyes with one of those soul-searching expressions that made Dean want to gag. Both brothers said nothing more, waiting for her decision. The tension was growing in Sam's chest; he wanted to get somewhere on the case, but it just wasn't happening. If they couldn't get her to talk with them, they might have to wait for _another_ person to die and Sam wasn't willing to do that unless he was pushed right to the edge. And he didn't want to be anywhere near the edge.

"I'm sorry," she said. Her eyes were slowly filling with tears again. "I don't… I just can't. Not right now. I'm sorry."

"Alright," Sam said and he crushed Dean's toes as he saw his brother's lips part to begin his protest. "We're sorry to have bothered you, Melissa. Please accept our—" Her father slammed the door resolutely in their faces.

"Well that was just _great_," Dean said in bad temper. "We had her and you _let her go_. What the hell was all that about?" Sam hushed Dean until they were back in the car.

"You _really_ don't get it, do you?" Sam demanded.

"Don't get what?" Dean asked haughtily, jamming the key into the ignition. Sam yanked it back out.

"When someone that close to you dies—it doesn't matter how or why—you don't want to talk to _anyone_. You don't want to hear what they have to say, you don't want to think what they want you to think. Everything just dulls around you and all you can see is things you _should_ have, _could_ have… We weren't going to get _anywhere_ by trying to force answers out of her that she wasn't willing to give. And I wasn't going to let you try."

"Give me the key." Dean said.

"Do you get it?" Sam asked, not obliging in the slightest.

"Dude, _yes_, now give me the key!"

₪

_Thursday, 12:00 PM_

"I cannot _believe_ I let you convince me to do this." Dean was standing before Sam, dressed as a produce boy and standing by the entry doors, waiting. "Someone's gonna catch me."

"That's why I'm the backup plan," Sam said.

"Yeah, because _you_ are too lame to go to jail. _You're _too worried about your permanent record. So we'll just let Dean do it."

"Basically." Sam straightened Dean's collar. "Now remember. Your name is _Sam_ and you're a produce boy. You still want to console Melissa Evans about the loss of her fiancé, J—"

"Dude, I _know_. I'm not the idiot."

"Coulda fooled me."

"Shut the hell up and go pretend to be Mister Nancy Shopping Boy, okay?"

"Alright," Sam said and he wheeled a cart away to shop in the nearby aisles. He tried not to be amused at the sight of Dean dressed as a produce worker and both waited for Melissa to come into the store.

Forty five minutes later Dean went over to Sam. "Are you _sure_ she was going to the store?"

"Yes."

"_This_ store?" Dean pressed, gesturing vaguely to the building they were standing in.

"_Yes_. Go back over to the lettuce, it's looking lopsided."

As Dean went back to stacking vegetables in more acceptable pyramids, Melissa walked in the automatic doors and headed for the peaches, one aisle over from where Dean was. Dean saw her immediately and glanced at Sam to make sure he was paying attention. He was.

Slowly and inconspicuously Dean ended up rearranging the fruit two sections down from where she was. She looked up and saw him. "Sam?"

Dean looked up and over at his brother a moment before remembering that was, in fact, his own name right now. Then he looked at Melissa and smiled a little as he dropped an apple on his foot. "Melissa," he said, pretending the apple hadn't smashed his toe. "It's good to see you."

"It's definitely good to be out of the house," she said, forcing a smile on her face. It didn't reach her eyes. "Look, I feel like I need to apol—"

"No," Dean said, holding his hand up immediately. "No need for apologies. We should have been more considerate and not bothered you so soon."

"Well, thank you," she said. "It's been a hard few weeks around here. I mean, with John and Derek and Derek's brother all dying so close together, it's just been hard to deal with."

"Derek's brother?" Was the most intelligent thing Dean could think of to say. His mind had just been sent reeling with Melissa's words.

"Yeah, didn't you know?" She asked, giving him a quizzical look. "His brother died a few days before he did."

"No," Dean said truthfully. "I wasn't aware of that."

"Terrible," she said, shaking her head. "Well, I've got to get some groceries and then I'm going to meet some friends for coffee. Maybe I'll see you around."

The second she disappeared down the bread aisle Dean was ripping off the produce uniform and heading for Sam. "C'mon. We've got to get to the coffee house."

₪

Dean had flirted a coffee house uniform apron right away from one of the employees there and Sam now found himself outfitted as a worker. As Dean was with her in the back room—no doubt having a lot more fun than Sam was, trying to work the coffee bar—Melissa strode in the front doors. Judging by her face, she was finding it disturbing that she had run into _both_ him and Dean that day.

"Ken?" She asked, her tone much more surprised than the first time around. "This is crazy. I just ran into Sam at the supermarket."

"Oh, really?" Sam asked, sounding like it was a minor surprise. "That's crazy." He yanked his hand away from the coffee machine as he nearly scalded his hand with boiling water. "It's good to see you're out and about again."

"It had to happen sometime," she said. She looked around and then at Sam's apron, which still had the nametag of Tiffany across it. "How… long have you worked here?"

"Oh, not very long," Sam said. "They haven't even got me a nametag yet!" He laughed a little and smiled. She seemed convinced.

"I'm sorry about how I acted when you and Sam came by to talk with me," She said. "Looking back on it now I wasn't hospitable at all, but at the time…"

"I know," Sam said. "I know what it's like to lose someone you love."

"It's tough, isn't it?"

"No one else can understand the pain." Sam replied cheerfully. "What would you like?" He asked.

"Mm," she glanced at the menu behind him. "I think I'd like a large vanilla mocha frappaccino."

"Alright," he set to pretending he knew how to even begin making her order. He continued talking to her as he fumbled through the coffee bar. "I do have a question to ask you," he said. "And it's going to seem weird."

"Okay…" she said.

"Have you developed any pictures lately?" Sam pressed a blue button that spat out whipped cream into the bottom of her cup. So she'd be getting it extra creamy.

"Yeah," Melissa said, not noticing his terror at operating the coffee machine yet. "Last week, why?"

"I was just wondering if something John told me was true." Sam said. "He told me there was this really bizarre picture that came out in the batch and that it was, like, purple or something?"

"Red," Melissa corrected. "Yeah, it was weird. And all crooked."

"What was in it again? Some psychedelic 70s room?" Sam asked, pounding on another button, only to find that it wasn't a button at all. He finally put some coffee base into her drink. "He said it was all bizarre looking and like there was a thing on the couch."

"It was some weird, white shape," she said offhandedly, "and the room looked like my living room, but I have definitely _never_ had it decorated that way."

"What happened to the picture?" Sam asked, puking vanilla syrup into her cup now via some strange looking nozzle.

"John took it with him to work Monday to show his friends," she told him. "He took the negative strip to prove it that it was real, too. He said no one would believe him if he just took in the print. So I don't even have that strip of negatives."

"Oh," Sam said, silently cursing. He didn't have time to be distracted as the blender was now wanting to spit out the vile coffee mixture he had created. He stopped the blender and handed her the drink. "Well, I'll catch you later," he said, "I've gotta get going."

"Okay…" she said, watching him disappear into the back room. She took a drink of her coffee and made a face. "Disgusting."

In the back room, Sam returned Tiffany her uniform and pried Dean off of her. "Come on, man,"

"Call me," Tiffany said to Dean who flashed her a smile and disappeared out the back door with Sam. Sam ran his hand through his hair.

"So?" Dean prodded.

"Nothing." Sam said.

"What do you mean, nothing?" Dean demanded.

"She doesn't have the picture, either. He took it with him to show his buddies the day he died. We aren't gonna be able to get a hold of a copy of this picture this way. We have to get the picture before someone disappears with it."

"What now?" Dean asked, looking at Sam.

"Find a 1 hr photo place." Sam said.

₪

Sam was standing in the middle of some magazine racks, pretending to be idly looking at the racecar magazines while he watched Dean through the cracks in the racks. If he were paying any attention to the magazine, he would have noticed the nearly naked girl sprawled across a hot rod car.

Dean sidled over to the techs working in the photo area. Sam couldn't hear what they were saying, but they were starting to laugh. Dean continued his schmoozing and Sam continued pretending to be doing something other than spying.

"Don't screw up, Dean." Sam warned his brother in a voice far too low for Dean to have heard him.

Dean laughed at some stupid joke of the photo techs said and did his best not to roll his eyes. They were really just college kids trying to scrape together some money. He found it rather easy to convince them that he could help them waste away the day if they talked with him.

"Gotta pack back to PSU later this month," one of the guys, the one with the dark hair, said pulling out developed prints from a dark case; Dean had no idea how it worked. Nor did he care. His goal was much simpler than understanding the mechanics of the photo developers.

"I gotta go to community college," the other tech said. His hair was long and blonde and Dean wanted to personally give him a hair cut. "So count yourself lucky."

Both turned their attention to Dean. "Where d'you go?" The dark haired tech asked Dean.

"Oh, uh," Dean scratched the back of his neck, hoping his discomfort would come across in a way that supported what he was saying. "I'm not the college type of guy," Dean said. "Couldn't afford it, couldn't use it. I never went."

"Rough," was the sympathetic reply he got.

"So whose photos are you workin' on right now?" Dean asked, leaning over the desk a little more to see what they were doing.

"Robinson. They live down the road. Annoying as fuck."

"Ah," Dean said.

"Jake, what the hell is this picture?" the light haired tech asked, gesturing his partner over to him. The other one went over and looked at the picture.

"That's some creepy shit, dude." The other one said.

"Can I see?" Dean piped up. They turned to him and brought the print over to him, lying it on the counter before Dean. Dean got his first look at the picture he was starting to hear quite a disturbing amount about. "Woah," he said, trying to sound normally surprised. "Got the negative?"

"Uh, yeah, somewhere. Jake, go look in that bin." With the techs otherwise distracted, Dean grabbed the print and ran. He and Sam had made it out the door before the photo techs had realized anything.

"You got the picture?" Sam asked.

"I got the picture."

"And?"

"It's some creepy shit." Dean handed Sam the picture. None of the descriptions thus far had done the photo justice.

The frame of the picture was tilted at almost forty five degrees, but the picture's reference angle was even off, as if you were looking down into the room from an angle as well. The entire room looked like it was from a bygone era—the 70s like everyone had been describing. Everything from the style of the lights to the pattern on the floor screamed this definitely. A lamp stood in the back right corner and it illuminated strange artwork on the back walls.

Nothing was easily discerned because the entire picture was glazed over in a solid wash of eerie red shading. The brightest thing other than the lamp was a lightened figure sitting on the couch. It's posture was slumped, like someone had arranged a rag doll or a corpse into a sitting position. A small line of what looked like blood ran from its head to its neck.

The remainder of the room was fuzzy and nothing else was easy to see.

"Whose was this?" Sam asked.

"Someone just down the street."


	4. The Pictures

**Title:** Blindly Walking

**Summary:** Sam is convinced something strange is happening in Oregon; Dean not so much. A suicide before their eyes convinces Dean that something is going on. From suicide, strange pictures and manipulated perceptions, the Winchesters find themselves doing what they do best.

**Promise:** No canon no story. I shudder when people make our dear Winchester brothers do things they would never (and should never) do. I promise not to do that. I also promise to be kind to the English language and use it correctly to the best of my abilities.

**Reviewers:** Thank you to: hearts-4-stars, Minako Mikoto and BlackScream16.

₪

**I will not be here for a week, so the story will not be updated until next Sunday or Monday when I am back and have internet access again.**

₪

After some quick deductions and some not-so-quick snooping in the phonebook, Dean was able to ascertain the address of "Robinson" who turned out to be a married couple that lived literally five blocks down the road from the store that had the 1 hr photo capabilities. The photo techs hadn't been joking when they said it was someone right down the street.

It was very quickly decided that they could not just wait for another suicide to happen, and without much further discussion, the Winchester brothers were en route to the Robinson home to do, well, something.

Sam and Dean made their way to this home slowly as they could bare, pretending to be lost every block or so, in order to make sure they wouldn't look suspicious as they slowed in front of houses and looked closely at various things around them. Sam was agitated, Dean could tell. Sam's leg was bouncing annoyingly and he was drumming his fingers on the dashboard as he leaned forward and read the house numbers and names on the mailboxes. Dean didn't want to let Sam speak about why he was agitated yet, because he was focusing on finding good places to be hidden.

Sam, however, wanted to let all the agitated feelings and words come out _right_ now and he decided that Dean no longer needed to concentrate on anything else.

"Dean, we have to _tell_ them about this. We can't just let another person die because we didn't tell them about this picture!" Sam's voice sounded passionate and urgent. Dean could see that Sam was on the verge of having an outbreak of words and feelings and Dean didn't want that right now.

"I know, Sam. I'm with you." He said amiably.

"Then why aren't we going to _tell _them?" Sam burst out, his voice raising a half octave as he got more frustrated and confused. "Take this car right over to their driveway and get out and tell them." Sam demanded. Dean took no heed of his brother's words, as one might expect, and continued as he was before.

"Sam, just how would you explain to them what's going on, hmm?" Dean let the car roll to a stop so he could look directly at Sam as he acted out a hypothetic scene. "It'd be like: 'Oh hi, we think this haunted picture might make you kill yourself.'" Dean took this opportunity to shoot Sam a rarely deserved, 'you are a moron' look. Sam didn't really appreciate the look.

"God," he said, hitting the steering wheel for emphasis of his point as the Impala traveled down the street. "Think about it, Sam. Just pull your head from the clouds and look at the facts this time around. No one is going to believe 'Sam the grocery boy' and 'Ken the barista'."

"So we're just going to let him _die_?" Sam asked disbelievingly, his frustration not assuaged, simply guided in another direction. This wasn't what Dean had hoped to achieve.

"No," Dean said irritatingly calmly. "Even better." He tossed Sam a hat and coat from somewhere in the recesses of the back seat of the Impala. "We're going to spy on him instead."

"How is that better?"

"Because it just is," Dean said defensively, reaching for his own had to wear. "Now, we're going to—" Dean's words disappeared into nothingness as a gunshot broke through his train of thought and ideas of being secret agents. Neither of them moved a moment, their muscles tense and their minds alert. Dean was ready to roar the Impala back into life and get the hell out of the area.

"Don't tell me it just happened again." Dean finally managed to say, shaking his head and trying to look inside the house from where he was sitting. "God, don't tell me we're too late _again_." He spat out the word "again" as if it burned his tongue. He even hit the steering wheel of the car.

Sam and Dean got out of the car in unison after another slight hesitation and bolted for the front door, no longer trying to come up with a cover story for their presence. Their cover had been made for them in the form of a gunshot. Now they were just there to play the confused bystanders.

A knock on the front door produced no results. The same could be said for ringing the doorbell repeatedly and furiously. So Sam reached forward and opened the front door. The two of them flooded in through the door and began to fan apart to look around.

It hardly took any time at all to figure out what had happened. Dean and Sam hadn't even gotten a dozen paces apart from each other before their eyes landed on the truth. In the front room lay a man who had just shot himself in the head. Dean flinched away from the gore and Sam's expression darkened immediately.

"Call 911!" Dean said, grappling with his coat pockets to find his cell phone. He didn't realize that his phone was still sitting in the car parked out in front of the house.

"He's already dead," Sam said darkly. Something was changing about Sam's face, but he wasn't sharing quite yet. Dean didn't want to know what thoughts were going on in Sam's head. He just wanted them to go away.

"Sam!" Dean said somewhat loudly. "We can't just—"

"Think about it, Dean," Sam told him dryly, looking at his brother. "There's no way this thing, whatever it is, would even give him a chance of living. We just need to get the hell out of here before someone catches us." Sam led his brother out of the house. Dean cast the home a back glance trying to believe Sam and alleviate his growing feelings of guilt.

"Give me the keys," Sam said incisively.

"What?" Was Dean's immediate and intelligent response.

"Give me the keys," Sam repeated, holding out his hand this time. Dean would have argued if it hadn't been for the fiery look that had come over Sam. He hesitated a moment, trying to weigh the pros and cons of letting his brother drive, and slowly handed over the keys.

Sam roared down the road and pulled in through three parking spots in front of the grocery store. Dean stayed in the car as Sam disappeared into the store, obviously on a mission. Dean basically twiddled his thumbs and whistled to himself while he waited for Sam to return. Dean was working hard to not consider what Sam was doing and, more importantly, what he was planning. Dean soon spotted his brother's angry figure storming back to the Impala and tried to not look bored.

Sam tossed a bag onto Dean's lap and the contents clattered around as Dean worked to not drop them everywhere. As Sam backed out way too quickly and started heading back to their lovely room back at the motel, Dean peered inside the bag at the contents.

"Disposable cameras?" Dean asked as he pulled out almost a dozen disposable cameras with different film and exposure times. He didn't even spare the receipt a glance to see how much money these had cost them.

"Yes." Sam said, peeling around the corner and making Dean hold onto the edge of the dashboard to not feel like he was going to fly out the window.

"Why?" Dean asked, looking sideways at Sam and wanting him to not give the answer Dean was sure he would give.

"I'm going to get this d-mn picture to come to me," Sam said, "because I'm tired of sitting around and waiting for it to come to someone else. I am not going to laze around and let one more person die because we don't have the balls to do something about it."

"No way, Sam," Dean said immediately, grabbing for the dash again as Sam sped through a yellow light and headed toward their motel. "I'm not gonna let you go and hunt this thing down. Look at what it's already done."

"That's why we have to stop it." Sam explained as he drove too fast for the speed limit. Dean twisted in his seat to make sure that there were no cops or troopers to pull them over for speeding.

"You think that _dying _is going to help?" Dean demanded. Sam's stubbornness was beginning to piss him off like it usually always did. Some things they would never see eye-to-eye on. Dying, apparently, was one of them.

"I'm not going to die," Sam said without much conviction in his voice.

"You have no way of knowing that," Dean said. "And I am not going to let you do this."

"Then what are we going to do?"

"I don't know. Something else, that's what." Dean decided intelligently. He slapped the dashboard for emphasis as he spoke. "There's no freaking way I'm going to let you put your life on the line for something we don't even understand. We don't even know what causes this. We don't know how to stop it. And we don't know what's going to happen next."

"And there's no way I'm going to let one more person die." Sam added to Dean's list. "No one else can die next."

"What if it's _you_ that dies next?" Dean demanded, the emphasis of the sentence on the word "you". "Then what am _I_ supposed to do? How am I supposed to fix everything if you're dead? I sure as hell don't want to cart a corpse of a brother around the country with me."

Dean was answered with silence, which was quickly becoming the method of choice. Sam had managed to make it to the motel while not using his turn signal once during the entire drive. He pulled the Impala into a parking space and shut off the car before he turned to pay Dean any more attention.

"Dean," he said after the silence that had ensued. "Look, man,"

"No, don't 'look, man' me!" Dean said indignantly.

"I know you hate not knowing things," Sam said, "but we can't use that as an excuse anymore. And I can't let fear be my excuse for letting someone else's nearest and dearest disappear from this earth. You have to understand that."

Dean replied with a steely silence which basically told Sam that he was very, very, _very_ reluctantly acquiescing and mostly because he knew he wouldn't be able to convince Sam otherwise. Sam took this as permission and he and Dean went back to their room with a dozen or so cameras in a plastic bag.

Immediately, Sam started ripping open the packaging of the first camera and began snapping random pictures of things around the room. After a moment, Dean slowly began helping him. It was obvious that the entire plan was weighing heavily on Dean's mind, but Sam didn't have time to be comforting right now. He was working on getting whatever this was to come for him next and to do so he had to have a full camera.

On the fifth roll of film Dean finally said, "You need to be careful." His words came across in an offhand fashion, but Sam could see through that façade of Dean's.

"I know," Sam assured him, "I will."

They spent the rest of the time in silence, snapping pictures of everything they could think of around the room. After the cameras were used up, Sam placed them in random places all around the room as if they had been set down and forgotten.

"What if nothing happens with these cameras?" Dean asked. "And we're wrong and something else happens?"

"It has to," Sam said.

₪

Sam rolled over on his bed early two mornings later and said quietly, "Dean." The only response he got was a muffled moan and the sound of bed sheets rustling. "Dean, wake up,"

"What, Sam?" Dean finally asked with fully formed words.

Sam didn't immediately answer. He tried to think of how to phrase all of the thoughts that were going through his mind. There was no way Dean was remotely awake enough to handle the amount of things Sam felt like saying, so he settled for,

"Let's go get the film developed today."

"It's four AM, Sam."

Dean rolled over and went back to sleep and Sam stayed up, eyes wandering and thoughts reeling. It hadn't been until now that he realized the gravity of what he was about to do. Slowly a clenching feeling began to take hold in his stomach and Sam realized he was nervous.

₪

Sam and Dean now sat on the floor in their room with twelve packets of photos fully developed and stacked in front of them, unopened. Neither of them made the first move and they both just looked at the photos that were sitting in front of them.

"This is it," Sam said, reaching out finally and taking the packet of pictures that lay on the top of the pile. Dean didn't reach for a packet himself. Sam tore the top of the packet open and began looking through the 24 photos that were sitting in front of his face.

Turning through them, Sam noted their contents. The drapes. The carpet. Dean's nose. His own foot. The bed post. The entire packet had nothing that even remotely resembled the eerie red photo he had stolen from the photo place earlier this week. Sam set down the stack of photos and looked at Dean.

"Anything?" Dean asked. His tone was hard to identify, but Sam thought it sounded hopeful. For what outcome, Sam couldn't say.

"No." He said, his own tone sounding flat.

"Try again," Dean said, handing Sam another packet of photos. Sam looked through this packet, too. His luck was much the same. While there were a lovely selection of random photos that were of anything present in the room, there was nothing that was misplaced or strange and certainly nothing supernatural.

Soon Sam and Dean fell into a rhythm. Dean would hand Sam a packet of photos and then sit on pins and needles waiting for Sam's verdict. Sam would flip through the pictures, paying less and less attention to what was in the pictures and focusing more on the color than anything else. He would then look and Dean and they would both share a look that was unreadable as yet another packet had been empty and they would repeat the process all over again.

"Tenth package, here we come," Dean said, once more handing Sam a package of pictures. He wasn't missing the fact that each packet of photos he handed to Sam could ultimately mean Sam's demise.

Sam flipped through each of the photos as he had. He paused on one.

"What?" Dean asked jumpily. "What is it?"

"Is my forehead really that big, or did you take a picture at a strange angle?" Sam asked. He could see simultaneous relief and annoyance flicker across Dean's face before his expression returned to unreadable.

Slowly the time passed by and there was not a single picture in any packet that they had not gone over twice if not more. Sam finally gave in and sat against the bed, staring at the mess they had made over the floor and the $200 they had spent recently.

"There's nothing." Sam said.

"I know," Dean informed him.

"Not a damn thing," Sam continued, staring at the mass of photos sprinkled across the floor. "We just wasted a huge amount of money on pictures of the carpet and your nose." Sam sighed and lay back on the carpet, staring at the ceiling.

"So what now?" Dean asked, following suit.

"I have no idea," Sam said. He let his neck relax and his gaze fell to the left. He stared at the dusty and dark space beneath his bed and pondered why no one had cleaned under the bed before. As he did so, his eyes fell on an object that was underneath the bed. He rolled over and reached under to see what it was.

"What's that?" Dean asked. He was getting annoyed with being the one to ask all the questions and call none of the shots.

Sam pulled the object out and looked at it in the light. Then, after a moment, he said, "It's… a camera."

"You're fucking with me," Dean said. "Please tell me you're not serious."

"I'm serious, Dean," Sam said, tossing the camera to Dean so he could verify its authenticity."

Dean said nothing and looked at the camera with a very mixed expression on his face. He didn't even have to ask Sam what he wanted to do with the camera. That answer was very evident. Dean reached in his pocket and pulled out his keys. "I'll be back in an hour."

₪

Dean walked into the motel room with a single packet of pictures in his hand. Sam jumped up to meet him and both of them looked at the packet before them. This time it took a long time before anyone touched the packet again.

Slowly, Sam opened the flap on the top of the packet. He took out the pictures and left them in a pile in front of himself. "Wouldn't it be great if there was nothing in here, too?"

"Great wouldn't begin to cover it," was Dean's reply.

Sam pulled off the top picture. Underneath was a photo of someone Sam didn't recognize, but it was not "the picture", either. Dean shifted uncomfortably as Sam slowly made the pile dwindle in front of them.

Sam lifted off a picture of a kitten and felt his breath catch in his throat because there was a picture of him and Dean on the camera. The picture looked like one taken from a candid position, but Sam couldn't say where. He let Dean look and feel properly scared before he took the picture off the pile and exposed the next one.

"Well, I'll be damned," Dean said.

Staring back up at them was the red picture they had been seeking.


	5. The Change

**Title:** Blindly Walking

**Summary:** Sam is convinced something strange is happening in Oregon; Dean not so much. A suicide before their eyes convinces Dean that something is going on. From suicide, strange pictures and manipulated perceptions, the Winchesters find themselves doing what they do best.

**Promise:** Canon, realism, etc. You know the drill.

**Reviewers:** Thank you to: hearts-4-stars and BlackScream16.

_Note: It has taken me a very long time to update, and I apologize. There have been several soap-opera-esque events in my life that have taken me from writing. I plan to take nowhere near as long to update from here on out._

₪

Sam and Dean were silent for a prolonged minute as both of them stared at the picture. It was an unspoken dare to see who would break the silence. The only sound that could have met either of their ears, if they chose to hear it, was the sound of their own ragged breathing. The discomfort level continued to rise steadily until Sam finally let out a long sigh that sounded neither relieved or restful.

"Well…" Dean said helpfully, still not taking his eyes from the photograph that was in Sam's hands. Dean didn't make much of an effort to finish his statement and let it simply hang there. The reality of what Sam was holding in his hand so casually had still not taken complete hold of Dean's mind. Somewhere in there he still wanted to believe they hadn't found the picture and that everything was still way within his control.

"Now what?" Sam asked. It was Dean's wish to hit his brother soundly on the head for not thinking about the "now what" part until _now_ of all times. He allowed Sam's question to hang unanswered a moment.

"Now we wait for you to become a psycho-crazy," Dean said offhandedly, stacking packets of worthless pictures and trying to not look even a fraction of the worry he felt. He had torn his gaze from the red picture, but he now wasn't even looking Sam's way, so much as at the picture.

"Dean…" Sam began. Dean could feel his brother gearing up to try and have a touchy moment.

"Sam, we don't have time for this anymore." Dean said, finally looking at Sam when he felt his face had cleared of the conflicted emotions that were firing rapidly through his mind. At Sam's silence, Dean continued.

"You know this means neither of us are going to be sleeping very well for a few days. And you can't go _anywhere_ unless I'm with you." He gave Sam a hard look that demonstrated that he was not willing to negotiate on this particular point. "_Anywhere._" Sam wasn't planning on arguing.

Sam let out a sigh again, more to fill up the emptiness in the room than to express anything. This one sounded anxious. "I know, Dean," he said, creating a rare moment where he conceded to Dean's judgment. He shifted around; silence suited neither of them well.

"Man, why do you always have to be the damn radical?" Dean burst out, throwing Sam a look.

"Dean, we almost die all the time." Sam pointed out. "It's not like this is any different. This time is just bothering you a lot more."

"Don't even go there, Sam," Dean commanded.

"Remember the Shtriga?" Sam countered instantly. "We put that kid on the line. We risked _his_ life, so why not mine. It's no different."

"It _is_ different," Dean insisted.

"How is it any different from what we've done before?" Sam asked as an annoyed tone crept into the edges of his words.

"It was us against the thing." Dean said. "It was two to one. It was never this one-on-one bullshit."

"All that's changed is that there's not a third person in the mix, Dean," Sam pointed out. "I'm not completely defenseless here and it's not like you're not capable of—"

"Sam." Dean said. "I should have never let you do this. I should have put my foot down. But I never do because I feel like I owe it to you to let you make your own mistakes."

After a pause, Sam asked, "Why is this bothering you so much?"

It took even longer for Dean to answer Sam. His eyes went unfocused and he looked at the wall opposite of him. Sam wanted him to answer but he also didn't want to interrupt Dean. It seemed Dean was thinking about a lot.

"Because I can protect you from things around you." Dean said eventually. His eyes were still unfocused as he looked at the wall ahead of him, trying to mentally bore a hole in it to distract him from the small burning sensation in his eyes. "I mean, I can shoot demons with rock salt and I can scream away distractions. I can tackle some badass shit when I need to."

"But?" Sam prompted.

"But I… I can't do anything when the baddie is _you_. How am I supposed to fight you and protect you, Sammy?"

"I dunno, Dean."

"Yeah." Dean agreed, the expression on his face falling just so slightly. "Neither do I."

₪

It took Dean a full three minutes to remember why he woke up so violently unhappy. Once he thought about it, the events of the day prior had completely taken over his mind and he found that he was unable to think of anything else. This did nothing for his mood.

Glancing across the table and sipping his coffee, Sam could tell exactly what Dean's mind was on. Furthermore, Sam's mind was stuck on the very same facts and thoughts and worries. Sam was mainly worried about what might happen to him. Sitting on this side of the fence, Sam realized that there were a lot of things he had not taken into account when he jumped headfirst into this mess. He wasn't about to tell Dean that, though.

Throughout the day Sam could feel Dean's eyes on him at different times. He knew it was because Dean was watching for something to change in him, but he started to feel very annoyed by how close Dean was watching him. Did Dean think he'd have absolutely no control over himself?

Dean, on the other hand, was trying to think of any similarities between the several suicides they had been witness to. He was grasping for any clue of what to expect or what to do. His worst fear was that he would be looking away too long and something would happen. Dean didn't think he could deal with losing control.

It made for a very tense day.

The tension got to Sam more and more as the day wore on. By lunch he was about ready to start tearing his hair out, and by dinner Sam thought he was going to commit suicide just because he felt like he was losing his mind.

"You need to chill," Sam finally said as they were heading back to their room from a high class dinner at a run-down diner. "Seriously."

"Don't tell me what I need to do," Dean retorted, jamming the key into the door. Dean heard Sam take breath in and he prepared to ignore the sarcastic remark. He jiggled the key around a bit before he got the lock to turn and he was able to open the door. Sam still hadn't spoken, so Dean turned around to say something more to him, but the words stopped in his throat.

Sam was gone.

"SAM!" Dean yelled and he dropped the keys as he made to begin frantically rushing around to find Sam. He could feel his heart rate soaring in a matter of seconds and his rational thought being obscured by adrenaline. So, against all the emotion speeding through his veins, Dean forced himself to hold still and regain his focus.

Dean too a deep breath in. And then out. A breath in. A breath out.

As his eyes unclouded, he saw what he hadn't before. Sam's cell phone was lying in the dirt a few yards from where Dean currently stood. He went over to it and picked it up. As he grasped the phone he saw the light indents of a foot scraping quickly across the dirt and realized that Sam had jogged or run from where he had been behind Dean.

Something screamed a low, guttural noise that made the hair on Dean's arms stand up and his stomach plunge uncomfortably.

Dean quickly picked up the trail, trying his best to keep himself in check so that he could be of any use. Once he had engaged the "thinking" part of his brain again, Dean found the hunt much easier. What he was unable to control were the quite images of what could be happening to Sam because he had been careless enough to let Sam get away. As much as he tried, Dean was unable to suppress these gentle reminders of inadequacy and he had to try to pretend they were not there for the time being. He had more important things to think about.

The trail took Dean to the parking lot. As he looked at the lot he let his eyes come to rest on his Impala for a moment. He started scanning across the parking lot, but something drew his eyes immediately back to the old Chevy. He went over to it quickly.

Running the whole length of the hood were foot high letters scratched into the paint. Dean felt an interesting rush of emotions as he read the words.

IT'S TAKING OVER.

Dean didn't give himself ample amount of time to try and consider the deepest meaning of the words. In fact, he didn't really consider the words that much at all. Just the fact that his brother was missing and probably turning into a psycho crazy.

₪

Sam had known that something was bound to happen to him because of the picture. He had known that this whole case wasn't going to be a cake walk in the park. But he hadn't known that it would change so suddenly. Dean had been trying to open the door of the room and Sam was preparing to say something sarcastic to him.

And then Sam stopped remembering. The next thing he could tell, he was in front of the Impala in the parking lot, breathing hard. He felt like he had just sprinted a mile. He had no idea how that could have happened, though. Sam could only tell for certain that he felt very disoriented at the moment. In fact, nothing was appearing as it should have, according to his logical half. He closed his eyes and rubbed them roughly, trying to clear the confusion from them.

He opened one eye and saw bright colors. He closed his eye and rubbed them once more. He opened the other eye and saw the familiar darkness setting in and the parking lot of where he and Dean were staying. He let out a slow sigh and closed his eyes a moment longer. He listened to his breathing for a moment and took the time to steady his racing heart and mind. It was all okay.

He opened his eyes yet again and his mind was hit with a barrage of conflicting images that challenged his grasp of certainty. It was both the bluish tint of evening and the bright color of a sunny day. He was in a field and the gravel parking lot at the same time. Sam closed his eyes again, determined to clear the jumble of realities in front of him.

He opened his eyes and was met with a bright, sunny day. In front of him was a large, cheery rock with squirrels and rabbits resting on it. He reached out a hesitant hand to touch the rock and felt the cool, smooth texture of the Impala's hood. Sam realized he was in a large bit of trouble. And he realized the feeling beneath his hand was slowly feeling more like rock and less like metal. He groped on the ground for a rock or something somewhat sharp. He carved words into the hood of the car, praying that he would be able to apologize to Dean for ruining the paint.

The last thing Sam remembered clearly deciding to do was to let the rock fall from his hand and hit the ground below his feet. After that, his choices were clouded.

₪

Dean quickly ran down a mental list of all the dangerous places there were around where they were staying. With every time his foot hit the ground, a new image of some way Sam might commit suicide came to the front of his mind. Dean had to stem the melee of images and focus on trying to find Sam.

If Sam was on foot, the river would be too far to get to anytime soon. Dean considered closer landmarks, but had no luck in deciding where or when Sam might decide to do anything. His best hope was to find his brother and go from there.

It was all becoming a guessing game from here. Dean had no foot prints or shoe scrapes or tire tracks to follow. He knew only too well how dangerous this has become for Sam. If Dean was unable to make the right choices, he wouldn't have the ability to even try to protect Sam.

That wasn't an option.

Yet even as he decided that was an unacceptable outcome, Dean saw nothing to help himself with. He saw no way to make this any less of a guess and check evening and that wasn't good enough.

He looked down at Sam's phone which was in his hand. He made a mental note to staple it to his brother's body as soon as possible.

₪

Sam was dazed as he wandered across the landscape. He turned a corner and found that he was at a campsite. Everything looked too familiar. He blinked as if it could help him at this point. The tent and gear he saw was the same gear he had stowed away in a garage somewhere back at home.

He walked around the perimeter of the camp a moment, trying to convince himself that it was not his stuff sitting here, set up for camping. He didn't get very far into that task before he was distracted once more.

"Oh, you're back." Said a woman's voice happily. The words were followed by some general clanking noises. "But where's the firewood?"

Sam turned to see who was talking and every logical thought vanished from his mind. "Jess?" He asked quietly, trying not to stare and gape in utter disbelief.

"Who did you think I was?" She asked, giving him a strange look as she rearranged a few of the things sitting out around camp. "Seriously, Sam. Where's the firewood?"

Sam didn't know what to say. He was staring at her, trying to decide which emotions to allow to take over. One part of him roared that this was not real, Jessica was dead and that he needed to pull his act together or else he was going to end up dying. But the other part of him wanted more than anything to believe that this was real and that everything else had been a dream and this was the truth.

Sam let everything fly through his mind at once and promptly fainted.

₪

Dean was climbing through the underbrush near the inn now, trying to find any hints as to where Sam was. He found he had even turned somewhat religious and was letting quiet prayers fall from his lips as he crashed through the weeds and twigs.

He had no idea where to look. He did have a strange feeling, though, that he needed to continue onward from where he was. Dean wanted to scream as loud as he could and vent some of the frustration that was building in his chest. This was so _unfair_. This was so _stupid_.

"Where ARE you?" Dean demanded loudly to no one. As he expected, there was no answer. He didn't even know what he wanted to find, at this point. Did he want to find his brother alive? Dead? Did he not want to find him at all so he could try and pretend that Sam was okay?

Dean wanted to pretend that this case had never happened and that they had never gone on a little side trip to freakin' Oregon.

₪

Sam had woken from his impromptu nap a while ago and had set to building the campfire for Jessica. She was preparing some food to cook over the fire just as soon as he got it going. It might take longer than he wanted, because he could already feel his stomach screaming for food.

Sam let his eyes travel over her a moment and smiled a little to himself in the leisure and tranquility of the moment. Things were so seemingly perfect right now. His strange nightmares of the last night were gone and the day was ready to be spent with his lovely girlfriend, camping, out in a picturesque landscape.

He couldn't even remember when he had decided to _go_ camping with her. But at this point, it really didn't matter. The fact of it was, they were having an amazing time and the scenery couldn't be any more beautiful.

The questioning was gone from his mind now. There was simply no way this could be a dream. After all, his hands were holding actual sticks. He was building an actual fire ring. He could truly feel the items in his hands and there was no way that it could just be in his mind. He had made his decision. This was real.

₪

The person furthest from Sam's mind was still stomping through what was quickly becoming a forest. Dean had no idea where he was anymore and could only hope that he wasn't forced to spend more than the night out here searching for his brother.

He ran down that list in his head again. All the things that could be happening. All the places Sam could be right now. Dean found that rather than helping him, his mental list depressed him far beyond the point the events of the night had. So he decided to stop, for the time being.

"SAM!" Dean yelled as loud as he could, more for himself than for Sam. He knew that even if Sam had heard him, there would be no response. And that was assuming Sam could still even hear him.

₪

Sam looked up from his handmade fire pit. "Did you say something, Jess?" He asked.

"No, why?" She asked, looking quizzically up at him.

"I could have sworn someone just said my name." Sam told her. They looked at each other a moment longer before Sam laughed a little and said, "boy, put me out in the woods and my imagination takes over."

"I had no idea," Jessica said. Had Sam looked up, he would have seen her features fade and reappear.

₪

Dean was looking around for any sign of anything. The darkness was becoming too thick to see through anymore and Dean had no flashlight. In fact, Dean was sorely lacking on most of the essentials for a hunt.

His mood was not helped by the fact that the light from his cell phone had died. Sam's battery was low as well and he couldn't risk wasting the battery in case he actually needed it. Not that there was a very good signal out here, anyway. He was convincing himself he could use the phone more for his own sanity than anything else.

He found that if he thought too hard about what was going on and what could possibly be happening, he started to lose his focus. Dean narrowed his focus down to finding Sam.

₪

"Are we ready to light the fire?" Jessica asked, coming over with food and sitting by Sam. "Because I'm pretty much starving."

"Yeah, I think we're ready." Sam said, reaching over to steal a piece of bread. Jessica slapped his hand lightly.

"Nuh-uh," she said, and then she reached out with a match and lit Sam's collected sticks and wood on fire. "There. Now we'll wait for it to get nice and toasty."

₪

Dean, working hard to be hyperaware of anything and everything around him, wrinkled his nose as the smell of smoke met his nose.


End file.
